Being Liars
by v-volatile
Summary: SydneyVaughn shipping! You know you revel in it.
1. Encounter

REFORMATTED! This is my first attempt at Alias fanfiction. I have written pages 'n pages of Matrix fanfiction, but I switched over for a second. Alias is tempting fic material because it leaves the whole Sydney/Vaughn thing undefined, and I'm a sucker for undefined relationships, so that's why this is here. It may be pure shippery fluff to most people, and I don't care if it is- although I will try and include some sort of distant plot to appease those hard-core, CIA-loving, every-episode-watching fans, too. Please review on ff.net & send comments or corrections to my email if I get any facts about characters or happenings in the show wrong. Please, if you email me, put alias fanfiction in the subject line so I don't accidentally delete your message as junk mail. Thanks ever so much! Oh, and I think Michael Vartan is just so hot that he is damn near incinerating. Bear with me. Disclaimer: I own none of this except the specific plot for this fic. The characters aren't mine. I love them but don't own them. A/N: Please let me know if Syd and Vaughn get out of character too much. I try to stay away from that. AND REVIEW!!!!!  
  
***  
  
  
  
  
  
BEING LIARS  
  
  
  
***  
  
WRR.WRR. WRR. Sydney woke up to the loud curious honk-like blaring of her alarm clock. Slapping at the off button, she rubbed her eyes and fought to wake up. Ever since she'd moved out of Francie's and gotten her own apartment, all the sounds seemed louder. Boiling water, the shower running, the alarm clock, the TV.everything sounded magnified, despite the fact that logic was against that conclusion. Stumbling into the bathroom to brush her teeth and possibly have a cold shower, she murmured to herself sleepily, trying to force her eyes open. Why was she so tired? Fatigue wasn't a stranger, but she usually had some amount of energy in the mornings.  
  
She made instant coffee and forced down a couple of pieces of toast. She didn't feel hungry. On the way to work she drove mechanically, and when her favorite song came on over the radio she didn't even notice it until the last verse, she was so tired and fazed. On entering the office, she was accosted by Vaughn.  
  
"Hey, I tried to get a hold of you last night around five but you didn't pick up, so I stopped trying. Another mission, straight from Devlin's hands to mine, which apparently has been on backorder for a while now," Vaughn said, thrusting a file at her.  
  
"What?" Sydney mumbled, looking down for a second, then up again, a confused look on her face.  
  
"Are you okay? You want to sit down?" Vaughn asked, dropping the hand holding the file to his side.  
  
"Yeah.I'm just really, really tired," Sydney muttered. They walked into an unoccupied office at the end of the hall. Sydney slowly sat down and took a deep breath. Her lungs felt noticeably shallower, and unconsciously her hand crept up her throat. Vaughn watched her intently. She was sick, he knew, but Devlin would be mighty pissed if he put it off any longer.  
  
"Syd," Vaughn said quietly, "I wish I could cancel this but I can't. Devlin will get angrier than he is now. He wants this done, you're the one qualified to do it, so there's not much I can change."  
  
"I know." Sydney rested her head on the bare wooden desk, her arms folded up to make a pillow like she was a bored schoolgirl. Vaughn's hand hovered over her head, invisible to her, then returned to his lap. It was so tempting, just a little brush over her sleek tresses.he let out a breath.  
  
"You were asleep at five last night?"  
  
"Um-hmm."  
  
"Okay, this last mission and then I just fucking get you a vacation," Vaughn said in a very uncharacteristic burst of indignation. "You're obviously sick, with the flu or something,"  
  
"I haven't eaten since yesterday," Sydney said, her voice muffled from her position on top of the desk.  
  
"Whoa. Why not?" He asked, now seriously concerned.  
  
"Nausea," she murmured.  
  
"Okay, I'm getting Devlin to have people help you with this. It was a solo thing, but is no longer," Vaughn, said, allowing himself the luxury of lightly touching Sydney's lower back with his fingertips before he left the room to get Devlin on the phone.  
  
"Ugh," Sydney muttered. She felt like crap- weak, shivering from what might just be a fever, and mainly irritated because she had a mission to go on now, instead of the opportunity to take off early and just recover. It was probably the flu, Vaughn was right.  
  
Sydney moved slowly the next few days, walking with careful steps on quivering legs, responding a long moment after the question was posed to her in conversation, basically disconnected. It worried Vaughn. He was not used to seeing her weak. Characteristic Sydney was happy and cheerful, awake, attentive, quick to engage in verbal sparring and fast to show a fraction of her emotion on her face. This new woman showed nothing. She was too tired to interact besides giving basic answers to questions and a few greetings here and there.  
  
She ended up preparing heavily for her mission, which was to come in one week. She'd leave for the contact city, Dubrovnik, Croatia, on the coming Thursday. She found herself taking vitamin C pills and Advil frequently, drinking extra water, eating soup a lot and pulling out cough drops at both jobs. Even Dixon was worried about her welfare at Credit Dauphine. He managed to get her a one week vacation from coming in to work since she didn't have any trips planned for SD-6 right then, and was rewarded with many thanks. Sydney spent that week reviewing schematics for the mansion she was to carry out, practicing her already commendable precision marksmanship at the basement range in the CIA building and sleeping copiously.  
  
***  
  
"You feeling OK?" Weiss asked rather informally. Sydney nodded. She was high on caffeine, from coffee- macchiato in particular- and a couple stay- awake pills. She felt better than she had in days and was trying to focus her best on the task at hand. Vaughn wasn't her partner, but he was in touch with her via a private line though her earpiece. Wiess would be on another line, giving her directions just in case she blanked out and checking up on her progress.  
  
Just in case SD-6 might be watching, the CIA had taken the liberty of disguising her quite well. She had contact lenses in with a differently shaped cornea that made her true-blue eyes not only purple in color but tricking eye scanners into thinking she was someone else in case anybody was watching. She had temporarily dyed her hair jet-black. Her costume was all black, covering as much skin as possible without restricting motion, with a mask for her lower face and even her colored hair pulled back and obscured.  
  
Sydney stretched her arms, looked ceiling-ward and blinked a long time, calling up a mental image of the mansion schematic. It was a very simple retrieval op. She had to get in and obtain three valuable artifacts. The first was an emerald necklace with a computer chip inside, the second was an envelope containing records of bank transactions between SD-6 and the IMF, and the third was a small detailed painting with a valuable code printed on a sheet of vellum underneath the top layer of canvas in the back. All very choice items. All in the safe in the second sub floor of the house, in the southwest corner, under heavy security. Sydney would have to kill three guards just to get in the house.  
  
"OK. You're set. Let's go," Weiss commanded.  
  
"Right," Sydney replied. She grabbed her 35-mm Glock, screwed on the silencer and strapped on her backpack, containing various security systems busting instruments a set of lock picks and a new generation of CIA safe opening devices. She was well equipped. Now all she needed was her body to hold up.  
  
Weiss opened the back door of the black van they were using and Sydney leapt in, winking at Vaughn, who was seating on a metal board secured to the inside wall of the vehicle as a makeshift sheet rigging some communications stuff. He nodded at her rather officially. His forehead was full of concerned wrinkle, his mouth twisted in a half frown. He was still worried she was doing this while sick. The van lurched into motion, and Sydney turned off her earpiece, cutting them off from contact with Wiess in the driver's seat behind the wall that separated them. She then opened her mouth to reassure him, bracing herself against the wall at the van rounded a turn.  
  
"I feel much better, really," she said.  
  
"It's the pills," he countered, his electric green irises going molten with worry.  
  
"I don't care what it is. The point is, I feel better," she said back, smiling a little.  
  
"Can't trick me," he responded, downtrodden. He felt sure something awful was going to happen. "Those pills and the coffee will wear off and you could be caught in the action without your full strength." He felt strange looking at this foreign woman, pulling the black fleece ski mask over her Sydney-shaped features. This raven-woman wasn't Sydney, despite the precarious tilt of her cheekbones and her full mouth.the eyes and hair unsettled him. He reached out and took a risk, putting his hand on her arm and gripping it before she jumped out the back of the van when they arrived.  
  
Sydney felt the sublime heat of this contact, stopping to turn and look at him. He stared into her purple tinted eyes, felt like he'd been fired and reassigned all of a sudden.  
  
"Hey," he whispered, "Be careful, please. I want to see you back here okay. Maybe exhausted. But unharmed." Vaughn's tone was hoarse and worried. Sydney nodded solemnly, regretting the loss of warmth when he had to let go. She pulled the ski mask down to turn on her earpiece, smiled her blindingly sexy full-out grin in Vaughn's direction and ran to the mansion's back entrance.  
  
Weiss joined Vaughn in the back of the van, parked discreetly to blend in with the trees and whatnot around the road. He didn't bother to ask why Vaughn was smiling instead of quivering in worry. He just put on his headset, turned on the transmitter and asked Sydney for her first update.  
  
"You in?"  
  
***  
  
Sydney was rounding the corner of the back hallway on the first floor, approaching a guard from the back. She crept up behind him, shot him point blank with her silenced gun. The thud of his body hitting the floor and the tiny thwip sound of a silenced bullet made another guard come running, and he was shot twice, once in the left shoulder and once in the midsection. Thwip-thwip. She flattened herself against the wall and tucked the gun close to her near her torso, ready to fire in case the next guard approached with caution. He did, and managed to disarm her before she uppercut him to the solar plexus so hard he crumpled. She followed that with a few vicious kicks to the head and shot him in the back as well after recovering her weapon. Tucking it into her hip holster, she jogged to the security system.  
  
"Passed the guards," she whispered near-silently to Vaughn's line.  
  
"She's through the men," Vaughn relayed to Weiss, although he'd heard anyway, breathing a sigh of relief.  
  
Sydney fumbled with the disabling device, knowing she had only a few minutes before the security system realized the back door had been tampered with. Not quite broken, which was why she had the little time she did, but tampered with.  
  
"Syd, thirty seconds before the alarm goes off-"  
  
"I know!" She swore, making Weiss and Vaughn wince, and proceeded to slam the device down onto the system, punching buttons. The system went dark, and she sagged in relief. She readied the safe breaker, picking a couple locks until she was in the inner rooms of the mansion, the tool calibrated for a sixteen number combination lock. She pushed it onto the safe and pressed buttons, waiting for it adjust and watching, raptured, as the safe door popped open.  
  
She pulled out her objects- the painting, the necklace, the envelope, all entrusted by the rich owner of the house to his easy to break into safe, and stuffed them into her bag.  
  
"Got all three items," she said into her earpiece, and Vaughn smiled. After zipping it shut and taking up her gun once more, she carefully sidled into the hallway, looking around. She turned her head to begin working her way towards the back door again and was promptly tackled from behind. Some man had found out her location and was trying to kill her. Vaughn heard the noise through his earpiece and gasped.  
  
"Weiss! We have to go in! She's been caught-" Vaughn began, but Weiss cut him off.  
  
"No, we can't. Remember, we can't be seen together!" Weiss told him and Vaughn shook with fear, even though he wasn't in the conflict.  
  
Meanwhile, Sydney fought for advantage as the attacker kicked the gun from her outstretched hands and came down on her. She rolled to the side and flipped back up, easing into a fighting stance, already feeling her breath come fast and hoarse. They exchanged well-blocked punches and kicks. Sydney put her foot up to kick, having jumped up and forward in an attempt to finish off her opponent. He grabbed her ankle, twisted it, but not enough force was in his move to stop her foot from driving into his neck. Sydney landed crooked, on her leg wrong, and felt a shot of pain go up her calf, through her foot and ankle. She screamed, thrashed back and away from the attacker's stunned form. Vaughn was damn near close to going in after her.  
  
Getting up slowly and run-limping out of the room, she slammed through the open doors and out onto the yard of the mansion. The door of the van was open, Weiss was just ready to leave. Vaughn saw her limping, deftly caught the bag she threw at him and let it fall behind him. He reached out his arms, ready to lift her into the back if she couldn't get on with her ankle. She accepted his offer, feeling the blood drain from her head, trying to focus through the oncoming dizziness, keeping her eyes latched onto his glowingly green one in the darkness of the inside of the van.  
  
"Oh.God." Sydney moaned, slumped on the floor of the van. Vaughn grabbed her bag, got out the artifacts, packed them away, and reached for the first aid kit nailed to the wall.  
  
"What happened?" He asked, joining her on the floor, cross-legged.  
  
"Messed up my ankle. I think I sprained it falling down," she muttered in response, her head lolling down so more blood could get to it from her heart. She was still breathing hard. He moved to her side of the floor, bound a flexible ice-pack to her ankle with a long strip of gauze, and curled his arms around her. "Nearly lost consciousness on the way over," she added, even quieter.  
  
"Look at me?" He asked, more of a question than a command, and sought the size of her pupils, used the act of checking her pulse as an excuse to put his palm on her neck. Seeing the position they were in, Sydney smiled dimly. He was warm all over.  
  
"I almost lost you," Vaughn murmured into her ear, recalling the pure panic in the moment when he heard her scream and no words followed.  
  
"This is against protocol," she said, noting their position. He winced. Not exactly what he'd been expecting to hear.  
  
"Why did you almost lose consciousness?" He asked, worried, letting his hand slip off her neck and move around her other side so she was completely encircled by his arms.  
  
"I was just weak. I don't know what happened! I was hesitating, getting hurt, thinking slowly and almost passing out," Sydney told him, worry in her eyes. Despite her protocol comment, she was stilling leaning into him and absorbing heat.  
  
"I told you. You were just sick. Look, go home today on the next flight, and sleep for a couple days and Weiss and I will leave in increments after you. Get better. And if you have time.bring back the items later. Since hotel surveillance saw you go out with this bag you have to come back in with it. You can drop them off with me once we're all stateside," he said, handing her the bag and trying to smile. Sydney watched Vaughn's every move.  
  
"What's wrong?"  
  
"You shook me up with the scream, that's all," Vaughn replied. She narrowed her eyes. He had the look on again- crinkled forehead, tilted head, molten green eyes and pursed mouth.  
  
"I don't think that's it," She said.  
  
"I was worried for you. I thought something bad was going to happen. And I was pretty sure this wouldn't come out all right. I was fully prepared to go in after you, Syd," he said, forcing out her nickname at the end, trying for some sense of normalcy.  
  
***I love you, I hate you, I can't live without you, I breathe you, I taste you, I can't live without you.***  
  
"It won't happen again, don't worry; it hardly ever happens now. Today is an exception," she said to him, meeting his eyes, a bittersweet half-smile playing on the edges of her full mouth.  
  
"I'm on your side," he reminded her, hoping regain trust, as Weiss stopped up the road from the hotel were she could get out unseen.  
  
"I know," she told him evenly, keeping eye contact as long as she could, accepting the help of his supporting hands as she slowly climbed out the back and attempted to take on a normal stride as she shouldered her bag and walked up the sidewalk to her hotel.  
  
***  
  
She slept a long and dreamless night, kicking around so much that she woke up sweaty, nervous, and tangled amongst the sheets, wishing she had something to hold onto beds a blanket and a pillow. After taking a shower and finding some sunglasses in the bottom of her suitcase, she picked up her tickets in an envelope at the front desk. The envelope was fat with the promise of the first class boarding passes Vaughn had haggled for; he always took care of her. Her code name for this mission was written in his neat script on the front.  
  
After disembarking from the jet at the airport in LA, she made sure to check to see if everything was still where it was supposed to be. All three artifacts were there, as well as her wallet, her fake passport and other important documents. She piled her things next to the couch after taking a taxi home. Her legs felt weak, her head was swimming, and peculiar waves of white-noise numbness tingling were sweeping her torso and hamstrings and quadriceps, making her weak on her feet. As soon as she got home she collapsed on her bed rather limply, unable to care about the fact that she was making herself a prime target. It didn't matter. She felt like she couldn't do anything but sleep.  
  
But this night, her rest was anything but dreamless. Things floated in and out. faces and names and voices and colors and images swirled in a mental blender until she wanted to reach out and grab something and just hold it in one place so it could be understood. She heard her father talking, Vaughn asking her how she felt, gunshots. heard her own cold indifference upon meeting her own mother in interrogation, heard Marshall stutter about some gadget, heard Dixon comment on her illness, heard Sark's sexual undertones and Sloane's ostensible fatherly tones. She wanted everything to just stop spinning, but nothing would, and it took eight rings of the phone to wake her up.  
  
"Joey's Pizza?" Vaughn said from the other end.  
  
"Wrong number," Sydney replied, smiling widely, her relief so pungent it could not be defined. Out of the dreamworld. Now she could just hope she was strong enough to meet Vaughn at the warehouse.  
  
***  
  
Vaughn pounded his fist on the part of the steering wheel that was not his horn, angry he'd get caught in such a snarl of traffic now, of all times. He was going to meet Sydney, who was currently several things: a) worrying him, b) sick, c) utterly beautiful and d) having a moment of weakness. He needed to be there. He wanted to be there. And on account of the artifacts, he had to be there. He had made sure that she had some time to get accustomed and rest, and had called 'Joey's Pizza' at about seven at night. It was taking him a whole hour to get to the warehouse because of this bitchy traffic. Sydney's flight had been due back at about noon, and he had arrived back in the US at about three, although all of them- Weiss, Sydney, and him, had left from different terminals and used different terminals for connecting flights. Not one of them had used the same route or come home at the same time; for example, Weiss was still in the air. He tapped his blunt wide fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and craned his neck to get a better view of traffic. Yeah. It was pretty bad. Resigned to being late, Vaughn reached for his cell phone and called Sydney's number.  
  
"Hello, Joey's Pizza, just calling to say your order will be about 45 minutes late. There's a backlog. We're sorry for the inconvenience," Vaughn said.  
  
"Wrong number," Sydney replied, and he could hear the amusement in her voice. It was the unmistakable image of a true Sydney half-grin that followed in his mind. He smiled to himself, through the traffic and all the hassle and reached easily for the knob to turn on the radio. The truth of what would have happened if she had hesitated a moment longer on her mission in Croatia set in. He knew that Sydney was not one to be ambushed at all; it was usually the opposite, and years of training had seriously shortened her reaction time, so an ambush wouldn't usually have shaken her so. Again he wondered what she felt, nearly blacking out and trying to climb into the getaway vehicle, into his arms, that is, like a criminal? The sun was beginning to set. Vaughn tapped his fingers rhythmically to the song that was on the radio and leaned his head back against the headrest, thinking about everything. Once more cursing the impatient bastard that was Devlin for sending Sydney on a mission sick, he watched the red-orange knot of sun-fire set through the filmy car window.  
  
***  
  
(A/N: I hate these short sections. Hm, I wish I could do longer ones but nothing comes to me worthy of lengthening them.)  
  
Sydney lived on the opposite side of town and as a result got there before Vaughn did. She went inside the warehouse, sat down on a crate and pushed it up against the wall, waiting for him, assuming she'd have a little while if he really was going to be 45 minutes late. She began nodding off, and nearly fell off the crate twice, when suddenly she heard the door creak and cracked open one sleepy eye to see Vaughn peering around the corner into the warehouse.  
  
"Hello," she said, looking up, summoning a smile. He smiled shyly back, and Sydney could've sworn she felt a quiver travel down her, right to her toes.  
  
"Hey. Got the stuff?" Vaughn asked, pulling up a crate, seating himself next to her with his back to the wall. Sydney nodded, handing him her bag. He opened it, checked the artifacts, nodded back and emitted a close- mouthed smile of approval.  
  
"Sounds like we're dealing drugs. 'Got the stuff?'" Sydney joked, making Vaughn laugh. For a little while they sat in comfortable silence, the kind that lies like a warm blanket over your body, not a suffocating plastic bag over your head.  
  
"How are you feeling?" Vaughn asked, partly out of true, actual concern and partly out of courtesy.  
  
"I feel okay, but narcoleptic. I sleep too much, I have crazy dreams, but my headaches are gone," she told him. "In fact I was sleeping before you got here, and I was sleeping at home after I got back from my flight. I just can't seem to fully wake up. I don't know," she shrugged, suddenly realizing how stupid and nonsensical she sounded.  
  
"It's okay," Vaughn said back. Sydney realized he meant it, and another quiver found its way down her back.  
  
Just as the euphoria of sitting quietly with the man who loved her set in, Sydney felt her dizziness come back. It started as a wisp of white noise pain in her abdomen, then grew and expanded until it became a sort of wave that encompassed everything from her collarbone to just below her hipbones, traveling menacingly by skeleton, making her gasp softly and hunch over to quell it, elbows planted on her knees. Vaughn reached over and grasped her arm, startled and confused.  
  
"Sydney! What's wrong?"  
  
"I- I- uh, don't know," she said, trying to suck in breaths of air and respond.  
  
"Here," he offered, giving her his arms to rest on for a moment, just as she wiped out completely from the overwhelming numbness and went under in a sea of black. "Oh, shit," he started, when he realized she was unconscious. Then, after making sure her limp form wouldn't crumple to the floor, he began thinking what to do. He couldn't take her to her house. He didn't know where she lived. He couldn't go to the doctor or to a hospital, there were too many people and too many reasons to supply. He couldn't go to the Agency, it was abandoned at this time of night- so, he couldn't go anywhere but home, the only place he'd have some sort of security and not get asked questions. Everywhere else, he knew he was being watched, and there was always the problem of lying to make her passing out look reasonable when neither of them knew what was going on. Her hair was still black, the contact lenses were out. She didn't quite look herself. He glanced out a high, dusty window and noted the darkness. It was then that he decided to carry her to his car and simply drive to his house.  
  
He was definitely going to take crap for this at work.  
  
Maybe even get fired from being her handler, maybe even get them both killed.  
  
But hadn't Devlin sent her on the mission, tired her when he was fully aware of her fragile condition?  
  
Okay, Vaughn thought, now that someone else is in line for the blame I feel better.  
  
***  
  
They drove in the quiet insulation of his car, the twenty minutes back to Vaughn's house, with Sydney's limp body gently laid in the backseat, a seatbelt clipped around her narrow hips to keep her from jerking around. Vaughn drove slowly and calmly, dividing his attention between listening for a sound from behind him and watching the road. Sydney didn't so much as twitch or whimper; she was out completely. When he got home he unlocked the door, then carried Sydney's limp body into his house and put her carefully between of the blankets of his bed, then locked his car and his doors. He closed the windows and pulled the blinds before putting on any lights just in case he was being watched. He was still nervous. At home alone, he wasn't usually worried, but with his agent unconscious on his bed, there was reason for concern. It was already close to ten, and Vaughn was not going to fall asleep until Sydney woke up and he made sure she was OK, so he made coffee and took it to his room along with a book.  
  
He found he could not focus on the words printed on any of the pages. He found he was continually looking up, making sure that Sydney was in the flesh in his bed, making sure what'd happened actually had. He imagined the situation were different, imagined he could lie down next to her and go to work with her in the morning, imagined she lived here with him and the image and scent and feel of her smile and her eyes and her hands and her body and mind soaked his walls. He imagined she would smile at him and say 'I love you too' when he confessed what he thought was love the day his grandfather's watch stopped.  
  
But it wasn't true, and no matter how many times he tried to imagine details he reminded himself how the reality was far from what his daydream was. He was sitting staring dumbly, book open to an arbitrary page in his lap, coffee sitting untouched dreaming unabashedly of Sydney when she rolled over, sat up, and asked him what the hell was going on.  
  
"Where am I?" She said, and Vaughn almost dropped his book. He set it open on the floor, giving her the impression he'd been reading by wanting to mark the page.  
  
"Um, you passed out in the warehouse," Vaughn said, "And this is my bedroom."  
  
Sydney processed this, bringing one palm to her forehead nervously. She looked around, first at Vaughn, looking delicious in his bare feet, mussed hair, sagging deep blue stained jeans and a plain gray t-shirt that was slightly too small, his brow furrowed into a worried expression. Then she regarded his bed, with its light blue sheets, and the posters for various bands on his walls. Van Halen, Beck, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, and Dashboard Confessional. She saw his closet door half open, sweaters, suits and oxford shirts peeking out. She could see down the hall to his kitchen, a somber gray room, and his couch, comfortable black leather across from the TV.  
  
"Your house?"  
  
"Apartment."  
  
"This is so against protocol," Sydney replied, but she was unable to stop herself from smiling so wide her dimples showed. Vaughn laughed a little. "But thank you. Thanks for taking care of me, Vaughn," she said. "You always do," she added as a slightly softer afterthought, pushing his sheets and blankets from her legs, remembering the slouchy jeans and small t-shirt she was wearing. The blanket smelled like Vaughn's aftershave and something more unique, something Vaughn only that you couldn't buy in a store. She took a deep breath and felt his scent fill her mind. She wanted to curse, then, seeing his perfection and their position simultaneously, wishing she had passed out at a club and he was dating her instead of the handler-agent relationship.  
  
***I love you, I hate you, I can't live without you, I breathe you, I taste you, I can't live without you.***  
  
"You're always welcome. I couldn't yet anything happen to you. Feel better?" He asked graciously. He wanted to say 'wouldn't' but somehow 'couldn't' had come out and her eyes had rose up to meet his when he said the word.  
  
"Yes," she said, ignoring the shaking arms she braced on the edge of his mattress, and rose, looking down to see her sneakers had been taken off. He walked to his living room. It was midnight, the clock on the kitchen table said so. She winced. Fancy coming home alone at this hour of the night. People would assume rejection.  
  
"Vaughn." She said it as a statement, something hovering behind it neither of them could place. "We need to make up a story for he questions you know will be coming from the boss," she told him. He nodded.  
  
"Okay. We met at the warehouse. You gave me the artifacts. You passed out. I decided the least obvious thing to do would be to wait until dark and then take you to my house since other trips would have attracted more attention. Your hair was still dyed. You were hard to recognize," Vaughn began. Sydney began to smile.  
  
"I cannot believe you've got a devil up your sleeve, Michael," she said, uncharacteristically using his first name. The sound of it coming from her made him grin. "And looking at that. It's speaking to me," she finished, almost laughing. "Okay, so I get put on your couch and you maintain a respectful distance form across the room waiting for me to wake up to see if I am in good health. I wake up and you give me two Advil and a glass of water, right?" She continued. He nodded. "When I tell you I am feeling much better, you have me keep out of sight in the back seat of your car, and you drive me to the warehouse, where I get into my car and drive myself home unobtrusively. In this way I never saw the route to where you live and you never show up where I live," she said.  
  
"Exactly. It's Devlin's fault for sending you. He exhausted you and you just black out through no control of either of us," Vaughn said. They looked at one another for a little while. Sydney shifted, she was stepping on the backs of her jeans. Vaughn hooked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, likewise shifting. There was another comfortable silence, but this time no dizziness appeared inside Sydney's middle, no little ripple of crumpling unsurety. Vaughn took one step towards her, and she suddenly knew- she decided something.  
  
"Hey, Vaughn, they don't know what we're doing.now.there's no surveillance now. We can lie later, don't you think," Sydney said, forming the last part of her statement into something of a revelation instead of a question. Vaughn started to smile a little, but Sydney could still see the little wrinkles on his forehead. She reached out, touched the swath of smooth tan skin between his eyebrows to banish the wrinkles, and studied him. She felt him start under her fingertips, clearly reacting to something he had not been expecting.  
  
"They're not watching.?" She said, a cross between a search for an answer and a belief she was right.  
  
"No, they're not," Vaughn replied, and reached for her, slipped his arms against her t-shirt and around to her back, pulling her right up against him. For a moment, her lips were on his neck, not quite a kiss, more of an inadvertent bump. They stayed still like that for a few minutes. Sydney breathed in the scent of him from the crook of his neck, tightened her arms around his muscular narrow middle and squeezed her eyes closed, pretending everything was regular.  
  
"I was worried," she said. "I was sure that assailant would have gotten me in Dubrovnik. And you know what I was thinking, when he kicked my gun out of my hand and it occurred to me I might be a goner? I was thinking of you. I was thinking of your perpetually concerned expression and your magnet eyes and how your gaze just follows me around all the time, and how angry you'd be at yourself if I got hurt, how you'd think it was your fault because you let me go on the mission, you, my handler," Sydney suddenly spat out very fast.  
  
"Not only that. But your friend," Vaughn said.  
  
"Yes. I notice, you know, every time you cast a look at my retreating form when I leave a room, how you're worried about me, how you're always touching me when I'm having a weak moment," Sydney replied, and moved her head to look him in the eyes. Green and brown burned together in the most natural union ever in the human race, and Vaughn could feel the heat from the blankets on his bed stored in Sydney's skin coming up to reach his nerve endings.  
  
"Don't dance around the issue," she murmured, their foreheads resting gently against one another, her lips moving just centimeters from his.  
  
And, with the full knowledge that this could get them fired, horribly emotionally traumatized if they couldn't see one another, even killed, they kissed. Really, truly kissed- a movie-quality kiss, enough to make Sydney's knees go weak and turn her fingers into little points of fire in Vaughn's perception, complete with all the little clicks and hums and head-twisting you get with the most addicted silver-screen couples. Pulling apart, she looked at him again.  
  
"You can lie, right?" She asked, keeping her head against his.  
  
"Yeah. Can you?" He said back, the wrinkles gone from his forehead, his expression now open and fulfilled, no smudges of concern or longing, no folded eyelids or wistful half-smiles, just the best grin she'd even seen in her life.  
  
"I can. We will be liars," she told him, and they both decided that kissing overruled talking. Vaughn found his hands splayed across the skinny strip of warm exposed skin between the low waistband of Sydney's jeans and the end of her shirt, and Sydney found herself in a similar position, her fingertips wandering up under Vaughn's shirt and lightly tapping the little valley between his solid back muscles.  
  
**You know he made my heart real strong, Even if he made my head real thin.** **If I could give all my love to you, I could justify myself.**  
  
"You know, you're a really good kisser, and I should probably be going home now or you'll be good at something else," Sydney said dangerously, making Vaughn laugh deeply, making her feel a little quiver of vibration from his throaty chuckle as she quickly kissed him one last time. He nodded, but refused to remove his arm from around her slightly bare waist until they got to the door, when he told her to keep her head down and get into the car quickly. She did.  
  
"What we will do, now?" She asked. Unspoken: how will we treat this issue now that it's out in the open?  
  
"I love you. I think I always have, for a long time. My grandfather's watch doesn't stop for just anyone. Let's keep it a secret from our bosses.but I have no qualms about calling Joey's Pizza if you just want to meet in the warehouse," Vaughn replied. Unspoken: I can feel the sunshine in your smile from way up here, I want to be public but you know we cannot, and I probably won't be able to stay away from you now for more than two days.  
  
"I think maybe I loved you too," Sydney said back. Unspoken: I probably can't stay away from you any longer than you can stay away from me, and I completely accept your moving in on me half an hour ago.  
  
Vaughn realized nothing could get better right now. Nothing. He smiled wider than ever, tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, and just thought of what could happen.  
  
"I never thought you'd say that, Syd."  
  
Fin. Please review. 


	2. Gift

The next installment! I would have done it sooner but I have been amazingly busy and even more so than that amazingly lazy. So here's a little something for everyone who reviewed, wanted more.and.ultimately fed Damon's muses. This is pure fluff right here, hell, I don't care if you don't want it cause it's plot-less, but I'm a shipper to the bone, so just leave and find something more action/adventure if that's what you prefer. Disclaimer: I own none of this except the specific plot for this fic. The characters aren't mine. I love them but don't own them. A/N: Please let me know if Syd and Vaughn get out of character too much. I try to stay away from that. AND REVIEW!!!!! BTW: the last lyrics used were from counting crows & saliva songs. this time they are from modest mouse songs. It's about cyclical things. Go sin(x), yeah fedirko!  
  
***  
  
  
  
  
  
BEING LIARS  
  
  
  
***  
  
"well the universe is shaped exactly like the earth,  
  
if you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were."  
  
Sydney was translating some notes a few people of interest had written that SD-6 had intercepted. She had taken care that morning to compartmentalize better than a robot would, only allowing her happiness about finally getting Vaughn translate into being a chirpy witty individual in front of Dixon, Marshall and Sloane. They welcomed this improvement unquestioningly. Going from Russian to English had never really been a challenge, and so she thought about other things while staring at the neat handwritten script and typing up her translation of it on the computer.  
  
The first thing was, of course, Vaughn. From now on that would probably be the order of the day. It was like a big cycle. She had loved Danny so much she could have tasted it, and then went through anger and grief and action and blandness and had fallen back into that love with Vaughn, the type of love that she not only looked forward to but also could taste anytime she wanted. She could do the same thing with Danny a few years back, when they first started dating. Call up his scent, his eyes, and his smile, whenever she needed it, or when there was nothing else to do. Did that make Danny void, if Vaughn gave her the same thing? Or it did it make her fickle? Or did it make the two men equal?  
  
Hard to tell, really. Then she thought about the future, always second up now that Vaughn had a permanent brain cell all to himself. The future. Such a tantalizing prospect. But only if it was the future with a dead Sloane and no SD-6, with a vacation from being an agent and a trip out somewhere for fun instead of thievery and violence. A trip with Vaughn. Um, okay, so maybe he took up the number two spot as well.  
  
But she still had to figure out how to meet Vaughn regularly without drawing any attention from anyone high up on either side. Perhaps start submitting various wordy reports on SD-6 activity that she would dictate to him in the warehouse, so as not to waste any time at work? Yeah, that sounded about right. She remembered that Vaughn and herself were being called in to Devlin's office tomorrow, and winced painfully. They would have to work something out. Make up some more crap. She'd have to be very vocal and extravagant describing her sickness. Not necessarily a problem.  
  
The problem would be refraining from grabbing Vaughn the moment she saw him that morning. He had that effect. And now all his looks had no suppressed longing in them. They spoke more to his 'get over here, we only have a few minutes and I haven't seen you for a day' side. That was usually what they ended up doing. Waiting for the hall to clear or stepping into someone's empty office with the blinds turned, kissing each other senseless, and coming out with mock angry expressions as if there had been hushed arguing, just to fool everyone, arms crossed, false surly expressions or looks of fake bored distaste on display. Work had become like a big game. This time it was fun, though, not painful, as it had been before.  
  
Sydney had often considered using one of Marshall's fun little hidden cameras to get a few pictures of Vaughn, having the irrational fear that she would suddenly be taken from him and they'd never see each other again, or that something would happen to her. If she was to die on assignment, God forbid, she'd feel better leaving some signs of devotion hidden amongst her things for Vaughn to find when they gathered up her stuff. And to keep pictures of him would make everything concrete, too, more so than it already was. Pictures smacked of a normal relationship, which was exactly what each wanted and could not have.  
  
Pictures she didn't have. Writing she did.  
  
***  
  
The next at work in the CIA building, Sydney quietly told Vaughn he should bring an empty bag of some sort to the warehouse if he was going to call Joey's Pizza that night, that she had something for him.  
  
"What's that?" He'd asked, a rare half smile directed her way in the empty corridor.  
  
"It's a surprise. It has to do with leaving for Goa next week," she had responded. The Agency was planning to send her to Goa, India, in seven days, to infiltrate a club, and then assassinate a free agent who had held jobs and gotten material for Khasinau, SD-6, and the Man, Sydney's mother. This free agent in particular was very talented. And very elusive, which is why both Vaughn and Sydney were very worried that Sydney could be badly hurt, captured, discovered, tortured or killed. This mission was far more dangerous than others, since it involved killing without trace instead of just getting information or objects.  
  
Sydney had come to terms with leaving Vaughn alone perhaps, and she wanted to give him a piece of herself.  
  
"What do you think will happen with that?" Vaughn asked.  
  
"I don't know. I could be killed, Vaughn," Sydney said, and they turned into his office. He looked at her a long time, standing facing her from behind his desk, and glanced quickly out into the hall. Then he reached out and grabbed her into a compulsive hug, his eyes squeezed shut. Smiling into the curve of his shoulder, she hugged him back.  
  
"Look, I know, and you know.HELL no. That won't happen," he said into her ear, feather-kissed her on the left side of her neck, pulled back. They sat down, trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism. Sydney crossed her hands, let her knees bump against the wall of Vaughn's desk, studied the tabletop, and tried to form some coherent thoughts.  
  
"And if it did? Look, this is going to keep you up all night. You didn't sleep before, and you sure won't now," Sydney said, quietly and with feeling. Vaughn didn't meet her eyes. "Call Joey's Pizza tonight at seven. I want to make sure nothing happens to you. You should have something to keep while I'm gone." she said.  
  
Vaughn's expression belied his attempt to stop from showing worry. "Okay, okay," he murmured, looking quickly out the window, "but it'll never be the real thing."  
  
"I know," Sydney replied, "I know." And she hurried out of his office to her mission briefing.  
  
***  
  
"Joey's Pizza," came his voice that night at the prearranged time, the epitome of bored menial worker. She had a fleeting thought of him lining up pepperonis on someone's dinner in a Domino's commercial, suppressed a grin, forced the interest out of her tone.  
  
"Wrong number," she said affably, hung up, and went to change into some slightly nicer clothes than her faded t-shirt and pajama bottoms. She decided on a pair of the famous low-low-rider jeans from that first encounter at his house and a blue sleeveless shirt. It was warm outside, after all, a nice sort of unstifling evening heat. She grabbed a messenger bag from the hall closet, put her gift inside, and hopped into her car for a windows-down drive to the docks and the warehouse.  
  
She came early. Going inside, no one was around, so she pulled a crate against the wall and sat down, securing another crate to prop up her feet. It was in this way he found her five or ten minutes later when he arrived, bag resting her lap, gaze somewhere out the window.  
  
"Boo," he said teasingly, seeing her zoned out. She jumped a little, then laughed, and gave him a long hug. He got another crate and sat down next to her. He had a business-like black attaché with him, empty of course, lying on the dusty floor next to his feet.  
  
"In one week, you'll stop sleeping. And effectively so will I, but me.I'll be doing something. You'll be staring at your ceiling paint at two am wondering if I'm still alive and just what it is I'm doing. So I have something I don't have a use for anymore that could benefit you," she said, and pulled a black notebook out of her bag. It was unassuming. Just a thick wire spiral on the side and a slightly faded black, fake velvet upholstered cover.  
  
"This is my journal. I started it the day Danny was killed and I became a double agent. So, if you can't sleep, get to reading," she said quietly. Vaughn's mouth had fallen open, he was speechless. The fact that she would even consider giving him something this personal and amazingly what he'd always wanted to lay eyes on since meeting her was shocking and delightful, quite simultaneously.  
  
"Oh my.God." Vaughn began, completely at a loss for words. His hands felt number as he accepted the book from her, proceeded to numbly thumbed through the pages. There was scrawled handwriting, and also neat script, little designs and pictures in the margins, doodles in all different colors. Photographs, in black and white, and color. Little ones from mall photo booths, pictures of her father and mother and Danny and Will and Francie and Dixon.  
  
Pictures of him.  
  
"Do you know.what you're doing here." Vaughn started to say, tilted up his gaze to meet hers. Had the emotional moats all dried up this fast? All he had to do was read a book to understand her?  
  
"Yes," she replied, unequivocally, straight-faced. "You always take care of me, so I wanted to return the favor."  
  
"And this.this is everything? Everything with your parents, and mine, and being a double agent and hiding what we have and getting sick and lying to your friends and everything about Danny and all your trips and all your past." Vaughn stuttered and spoke fast, struggling to understand her openness.  
  
"You want this to last, then keep no secrets. God, you look like a catatonic mental patient," she muttered, inched closer. "Um," was his only reply. Sydney threw an arm around his waist. Vaughn settled limply against the wooden boards of the wall, cradled the book in two loose palms. "Wow," he added dimly a couple long moments later, which made Sydney laugh deep in her throat and lean closer. Their heads bumped gently together.  
  
"This is more than I wanted from you, ever, Syd. Thank you-" Vaughn began, but her found he couldn't add his operative phrase, 'so much', because Sydney was kissing him. Naturally he kissed her back, and before long, the famous black book was sitting neatly in Vaughn's lap, his hands busy tangling in her thick curly hair and snaking their way around her waist and up her neck.  
  
Minutes, long minutes of this, was followed by Sydney telling him she had to go, insistently pressing the journal into his hands a final time, then giving him a quick kiss and telling him to save it for when she'd leave, because he'd need it.  
  
After she had already started on her way home, Vaughn was still sitting with his head against the wall, pleasantly shocked. Then he put the book into his attaché and mechanically walked out of the warehouse, into his car, onto the roads.  
  
***  
  
**Well,** Vaughn thought, **I have it. Perhaps this is why having her picture on my desk would not help my problems whenever she goes on assignment. Screw pictures, I have her.***  
  
Over the following weeks, Vaughn read a bit each night to put himself to sleep, conspicuously like a little kid. If he woke up from sheer anxiety, which was often, he'd read again, despite the hour, until he felt drowsy. Having no roommate was proving valuable, sometimes he left the book tangled in his sheets. Pictures and scraps of paper would fall out, and he'd tape them back in blank margins. Sitting cross-legged on his rumpled sheets at a quarter to four with half-moons of blue beneath his squinting eyes, he realized how much he had missed watching from afar all this time. Like.her childhood, or what she remembered of it. There were pictures of Mrs. Bristow, so shockingly typical in the American family format, real happiness all that time, a group of lies forming it.  
  
So whenever Sydney left, he would read and smile and laugh along with her. It didn't decrease the heat of their first kiss after she got back from wherever, to have 'Imaginary Sydney' talking to him at night.and it sure as hell helped with insomnia.  
  
In this way he managed to trap her magnetic smile and big dimples, her sparkling eyes and great kissing skills, and smoldering comments and heartwarming hugs, and potent familial grief and constant falsehood and awesome style and other such things essential to her being.  
  
She had spent a few years making herself into another form waiting for the recipient to come along, he liked to think, and he was the lucky man.  
  
  
  
FIN.  
  
A/N: This is all there will be, two measly chapters. I have nothing left. Damon's muses moved on. ;) So you should review and look out for coming fics, probably Harry Potter, if I have time to write them. God knows I suffered through finals week and AP course material on this one, as well as my mum screaming bloody murder about getting in bed before ten! 


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